Distress Flare
by hushedgreylily
Summary: Claire and Owen, in the immediate aftermath. Some smut, a whole lot of angst, and a little bit of romance. Oneshot.


**DISTRESS FLARE**

 **Claire and Owen, in the immediate aftermath. Some smut, a whole lot of angst, and a little bit of romance. Oneshot.**

 **I have NO time in my life at all right now, studying for some finals. So starting to write for a new fandom is ABSOLUTELY not what I should be doing. But Clawen just hasn't left me alone since I first saw the film like last June, I've been reading ever since and decided to finally try my hand at writing.**

After Karen and Scott announce they're taking Zach and Gray straight to bed, and Zach doesn't even have the energy in him for his usual teenage groan, Claire gives the two of them tighter hugs than she's ever given them before and leaves them in the so-much-more-responsible hands of their mother. They'd had burgers and chips in the hotel café the moment they'd gotten there, straight off the boat, and they'd all four gorged themselves in almost silence, her sister and her somewhat estranged husband sitting quietly by their sides, watching.

She had seen the shock coursing through Karen's eyes, she doesn't know Scott well enough to read his, but she assumes he's probably affected in the same way. She stares after her nephews' retreating backs, until they disappear into the elevator. After everything, she almost doesn't like having them out of her sight.

"They're gonna be fine." Owen breathes, from his seat beside the burger plates, practically licked clean, and she sinks into the chair next to him, turning her eyes to his. She looks _exhausted,_ the first thing he thinks, and without doing any further thinking he reaches out and takes her hand. "They'll bounce back before we do, I'll bet you."

She gives him a tiny smile, wrapping her fingers around his. It's like he's something of a lifeline, then. She doesn't need to say anything and therefore she has far too much brain space available for thinking, when she starts thinking she starts remembering, and when she starts remembering…

"I should probably shower…" she breathes, running her other hand through mussed, filthy hair, and she thinks she hears a low chuckle.

"I was thinking that." Owen grins. "You've started to _stink_ in the last few-"

Rolling her eyes is still enough to silence him, but she's smiling, and she doesn't offer anything back, let alone a condescending admonishment. It's as if the Claire Dearing who went into Jurassic World that morning has changed irreversibly. Despite the relief that she's come out the other end a living human being, she's not the same human being. And she's never going to be.

"You could use one too, you know." She looks down at their hands, stroking her fingers over his, slowly, absent-mindedly, marvelling at the layers of filth on their skin. Then she looks up at him and draws her fingers away. "I'll see you in the morning, I expect."

He nods, stunned, as if her sudden reversion back to something closer to the old Claire Dearing has rendered him speechless. But he supposes maybe if pretending nothing happened is her way of coping… "In the morning." He echoes, so quietly she's almost not sure if she heard anything at all.

* * *

She runs a cold shower, in the end, like she doesn't feel as if she deserves the luxury of warm water washing all the blood off. The blood, the muck and the petrol are like something of a brand she's not even sure if she feels like she should be scrubbing off, but it's almost like an obsession once she gets under the water, once she gets used to the temperature. Suddenly it's become as if she can scrub away everything that happened. And she wants to do that more than anything.

Eventually, her teeth start chattering, and she decides she's been showering in the freezing water long enough. She takes a step out, wrapping herself in the soft, sweet smelling hotel-issue towel, and it feels like more of a luxury than she deserves. She slips into the clothes Karen had left for her, having already thrown the remains of her work clothes into the bin.

When she steps back into the bedroom of her hotel suite, she looks at the bed for a moment, and though she's more tired than she's ever been and it should look more inviting, it only makes her think of nightmares right now. Sighing, slipping her hotel key into her pocket, she leaves the room.

* * *

There's only one other person in the hotel bar, a man nursing a Scotch on the rocks, in a mismatched flannel shirt and a pair of threadbare joggers. Donated clothes. She wonders, momentarily, if Karen had forced Scott to find something for Owen.

He looks up when she sits on the bar stool next to him, and she can't read anything in his eyes other than _defeat,_ and in some respects that scares her more than having a tyrannosaurus on her heels. Despite everything, throughout the whole thing, he'd never had that much _hopelessness_ in his expression. He'd always looked at her like he had utter faith everything would turn out alright.

"Sleeping not for you tonight either?" he gives her a weak, watery smile, but as she orders two tequilas, the smile becomes a little more real. She throws the drink back and slams the glass down before she replies.

"I think tonight's for drinking." She smiles, nodding at the barman offering her another.

"I didn't think you drank tequila." He muses, and it's almost like he's talking about someone else's life, their failed date feels so distant now.

"People change." Claire almost spits. _Lives change, everything changes_ echoes in the air after her words, but he knocks back his own tequila silently. If Claire wants to decide tonight's for drinking and dancing around saying anything _real_ , he's game for that.

Tonight should be about forgetting, not remembering.

* * *

Without complete focus, Owen, in a moment of startlingly sober detachment from the whole situation, realises the number of bottles and empty glasses he can see on the bar in front of him is too many. And glasses have been cleared, that's not all of them. But Claire is dancing with herself next to him, eyes closed, clutching a can of beer, surprisingly steady on her feet, and she looks… _relaxed._ Like right in that moment she isn't even slightly thinking about everything that happened, and he's had enough to drink to be able to somehow both acknowledge it and not let it touch him. There's a slight smile dancing on her lips, and when she opens her eyes and crooks her finger at him he half-falls off the stool and starts dancing next to her to the soft sound of the early hours of the morning in a deserted hotel bar.

They simultaneously seem to decide the song's changed and step closer together, and, surprisingly, it's Claire who puts her arms around his neck, the first contact. She's still moving, slightly, to whatever rhythm all the wine and the tequila and now the beer has started strumming in her head, but she's moving against him now. Breathing's suddenly more of a challenge.

He's not sure how long they sway together, but at some point they realise the poor, long-suffering barman has pulled down the hatch on the bar, and they're dancing in silence in a big, empty room. Owen brushes some red strands behind Claire's ear.

"The bar's closed." He grips her shoulders, steadying her, ending the dance. She simply smiles at him and leans into him slightly, before letting him take her hand and lead her towards the elevators. Once they get to the top corridor, as he starts walking her along towards her room, he notices her staggering. She must be drunk, he admits guiltily to himself, the woman who ran away from a T-Rex in heels, staggering in flip flops.

When they reach her door he opens it for her, and as she starts to stumble through, she turns.

"Stay." She breathes, kicking off the flip flops and putting her hands on the base of her T-shirt, as if she's ready to pull it over her head. He doesn't know if he'll be able to handle that.

"You're drunk, Claire."

"So are you." She says, and she sounds breathier than usual.

She takes a step towards him, pulling her T shirt up a little, revealing maybe an inch of pale, perfect skin. He takes a deep breath. "You don't know what you're doing."

She folds her arms around his neck, he doesn't resist. When she looks up at him, there's a strange, almost sober honesty in her eyes. "I don't want to know what I'm doing." She breathes, stepping closer, pressing her body up against his. "And I can't think about what I've done."

She looks so desperate, so _broken,_ he can't argue with her. And maybe after everything that's happened they need to be able to stop thinking about what they're doing, if only for a night.

He lets her press her lips to his.

* * *

He tastes like nothing she's ever experienced before, fire and spice (and obviously tequila) and what she's sure she'll one day decide was a terrible decision. But he was being so infuriatingly _gentlemanly_ and refusing her in her state of inebriation that the moment the refusal ceased she felt she had to dive in. And once she dives in it only takes seconds for Owen to respond.

His tongue dances against hers like there's no tomorrow, and within seconds he's pushing her roughly a few steps forward and kicking her hotel room door shut behind them. And then his mouth's trailing down her throat and she's already gasping, tilting her head back in ecstasy, and in that moment she's _feeling_ this so much, feeling him, that she can't remember why her whole life is coming crashing down around her.

She pulls back for a moment, and she makes eye contact with him as she pulls the T-shirt swiftly over her head. In the harsh artificial light of the budget hotel bedroom, she notices his pupils are blown.

That makes her breath catch again as she almost blindly reaches for him, because it's all her that's doing that, and she'd be lying if she said that Owen Grady - the non-conforming, slightly rude raptor trainer – hadn't _enticed_ her since she'd interviewed him for the position.

His teeth clash against hers as they come together again, and this time she's slipping her hands in the waistband of his joggers, pushing them down to around his ankles, and unbuttoning and unzipping Karen's spare jeans as he kicks his shoes off and the joggers with them.

He puts his mouth on the skin just below her ear, and he's pushing the jeans down over her hips as he pushes her gently backwards, to end up sitting on the edge of the bed.

She goes to stand, affix her mouth to his again, but he pushes her back down.

"Stay there." He hisses, and trails his mouth down her throat, over her collarbone, nipping at the side of her breast for a second but carrying on past. Her breath hitches as she realises where he's going and she starts to half-heartedly attempt to kick her jeans off from around her ankles, but she can hardly breathe, and she can hardly move.

He slips his fingers under the side of her panties, feeling her wetness before he gets very far.

"Jeez, Claire." He hisses against her lower belly, and presses his fingers, tentatively at first, into her. She bucks against him instinctively, leaning back on her hands on the mattress, head pointed to the ceiling. His fingers start moving, slowly at first, and despite being all freshly showered and clean, the friction from his callused hands is a little something extra.

All of a sudden, his fingers come away. Gasping, she looks down at him, only to see him tossing her panties aside before lowering his head. He slides his fingers back within her in the same moment his mouth finds her clit, and she can't help the moan. For a split second she considers the somewhat incomprehensibility of the whole thing, that less than 48 hours ago she was starting a morning at work, this man nothing more than an annoying member of staff, and in the time since that moment they've faced death together more than once, and now he's on his knees, between her legs in her hotel room, and he's doing _unspeakable_ things to her with his tongue.

Unspeakable things she brings her attention right back to when he suddenly changes tactic and his tongue delves within her, his fingers finding her clit and playing with the bundle of nerves, the rough skin of his fingers and the state she's in enough to send her over the edge. She screams, coming down crashing around him, laying back against the mattress.

She lays there, panting, as he draws back, and then crawls up her body, laying over her, pressing his mouth against hers with all the elegance of a hungry raptor.

She tastes herself on him, and that makes her breath hitch again, already. She lifts a hand slightly to grasp him, still through the cotton of his boxers. He's so hard she doesn't know how he's holding out, and she starts pushing his boxers away. He pulls away from her mouth, a half smile on a flushed face, pupils still blown.

"We don't have to… this was about you…" he breathes, and she shakes her head, almost disbelieving, and tears at his underwear in frustration, taking him in her hands without the cotton barrier.

"I want you…" she pants, guiding him haphazardly in the right direction "I think I might need you."

He doesn't need any further persuasion, and he slides between her folds almost painfully slowly after that, reaching further than she thinks she's ever felt before.

"Oh God…" she whispers, as he pulls out and thrusts back into her, hitting right where she needs him. Owen chuckles darkly and crashes his mouth against hers, sloppily and messily and _beautifully_ , tongues dancing together as he pumps into her, his speed increasing.

He doesn't last long, and he doesn't chastise himself for it, not today. He sees her right to the edge again, and comes crashing down with her, and afterwards they both lay, panting, in completely the wrong direction on Claire's hotel room bed.

After an incomprehensible amount of time, he eases them both onto the pillows, tucking his whole body and the duvet around Claire, pressing his lips into her hair and taking her hand.

"Stay." She breathes, in her half-awake reverie.

Like she'd needed to ask.

* * *

When she wakes, her head is throbbing, and the first thing she notices is that her head's not resting on a pillow, exactly.

Her head is resting on warm skin, and when she tilts her head and looks at what the chest she's resting on is attached to, it happens to be Owen Grady's head. Surprisingly, maybe, she's not all that surprised. A line of sun, escaping between the curtains, goes across his face, and she imagines it'll wake him any moment.

So she heaves herself up onto her elbows and presses her lips gently against his, waiting for him to deepen it and letting his tongue in her mouth when he does. He pulls away slowly, they both open their eyes, and a tiny smile graces her swollen lips.

He has an air of confusion about him, bemused bewilderment, and she muses that maybe he'd had more to drink than she'd thought.

He groans, clutching his head with one hand, bringing the other to the small of her back.

"Where are we?" he whispers, moving his fingers in circles on her skin, "Where did we end up?"

And when she replies, it's pretty much the only thing left that still makes sense.

"The first day of the rest of our lives."

 **FINIS**

 **That's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed, always nervous about posting for a new fandom, would love to hear what you all think! And, like I said, I have no time at the moment, but I do have the spark of an idea for a sequel to this that might one day surface with enough persuasion!**


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